


Jumpstart

by thebasement_archivist



Category: Highlander - All Media Types, The X-Files
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-02-15
Updated: 2001-02-15
Packaged: 2018-11-20 20:01:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11342256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: A case of mistaken identity leads to a very interesting evening in a sleazy motel between one FBI agent and one Immortal.





	Jumpstart

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Jumpstart by Garnet

FANDOM: X-Files/Highlander Crossover  
AUTHOR: Garnet   
PAIRING: Mulder/Cory Raines  
RATING: NC-17   
FEEDBACK: Oh,   
ARCHIVE: Just ask, but certainly RatB & Basement  
DISCLAIMER: Who, me? Oh no, I just play with em, officer.  
SUMMARY: A case of mistaken identity leads to a very interesting evening in a sleazy motel between one FBI agent and one Immortal.  
WARNINGS: Cory can be addictive. I'm warning you.  
SPOILERS: Most any Krycek ep up to Tunguska/Terma.  
Previously published in "Dark Fantasies 8" by Maverick Press.

* * *

Jumpstart   
An X-Files/Highlander (Cory Raines) crossover by Garnet

It's no fun to die anymore. It used to be simple, easy, slick. They shoot you down and then chuck you in a hole somewhere and your friends come along and dig you up. One-two-three, and you're back out on the road and on to your next grand adventure.

Nowadays, you gotta worry about autopsies and embalming and, I tell you, a drawer in the morgue is no place to wake up to. Just a bit on the chilly side, to put it mildly.

I used to get off on dying. I never told anyone that, not even my dear sweet Amanda. And, certainly, not that old stick-in-the-mud, McLeod. He thought I was pretty much a sick fuck already, you could tell that right off. Though, we didn't use words exactly like that back when we first met.

I miss those days. The cars we used to have and the clothes and the guns. They all had a weight and a character to them that they just don't have anymore. A certain style.

My style.

'Course, I got off on the stealing, too. And the giving-away that came after. Folks were really poor back then. And they were grateful, too. They returned such small kindnesses as they could afford in exchange for the cash and the new start on life that I gave them. I don't know how much I've Robin Hooded over the years since I figured out I wouldn't have to stay dead and it alleviated my worries about having to make it out of a heist alive. With the cash, somehow, yeah, that was a worry, but not saving my hide. Not anymore.

Not as long as I had someone around to dig me back up. So I could get me the hell out of Dodge. On to the next town and the next job and the next starving family.

Sure, it was selfish in a way. It felt damn good to help the poor and it felt even better to pull one over on the rich and it was a grand fucking turn-on to be the dark hero, to be always riding on the edge, on the run from the law, with my hat pulled down low and the dust cloud rising up high and thick behind me and the sun gleaming off the spit-polish of the latest car I'd acquired and was soon to pass on to someone or ones less fortunate at the next presented opportunity. Trade up and on.

Hell, why not? I was an Immortal. I could afford to be benevolent. I was going to live forever--or die trying, as the old saying goes--and I'd already had more life than they ever could imagine. More life than I'd likely have been able to comprehend back in the days when I was just a man like any other, unknowing of the seeds of what lay within me. Unknowing of anything but my own hunger. The hunger of my brothers and sisters and how hard my mother worked to feed us all, especially once our father ran off.

She was a good woman. I miss her still, even after over three hundred years. I miss her rare smiles and how I caught her dancing once down by the river where she'd gone to fetch water, the early morning sun not yet bright enough to burn off the last of the evening's fog. She had lifted her skirts and let down her hair and all she needed was a circlet of flowers to be the complete figure of a wanton. She would have been punished for it, for daring such a sin, if I'd have spoken up as I was compelled to by the law, but it was so beautiful and so sad that I never said a word about it, not even to the woman I finally married.

A proper woman. Who never even in her deepest dreams would have thought to dance herself, who hardly even smiled and spoke only in soft undertones and kept her head bowed and her eyes to herself, even when I bedded her. Who prayed each night and every morning and many times in-between, the prayers growing even longer and more devout after we'd been married nearly two years and still hadn't been blessed with a child.

I never really loved her, but it made me sad that we never had that even between us. That, as it turned out, we never could have.

I married her for her money, of course. For the land that came as part of her dowry. She had some kind of deformity of her left hand and wasn't the most lovely of women to begin with and was already far past her first blush by the time I wed her, but her father had money and land to spare and loved her and wanted her to be happy--or what passed for happy within the strictures of God's teachings--and my family was sinking deeper and deeper and there it was. She was nearly 23 when we wed and I was 19 and together we would work the land we'd been given and spend every Sabbath in prayer and reflection and learn to tolerate and appreciate, if not actually care about each other before, dying together five years later of an epidemic that took good near half the town with us. I buried her myself in our little orchard in back of the house before succumbing myself to the fevers.

And some Good Samaritan must have found and buried me soon after, because I woke for that first time in a shallow grave, right next to the one I'd dug for my long-suffering wife. I didn't know what had happened to me and what I was then, of course, and I actually wandered off into town in a state of confusion and ended up being accused of being in collusion with the devil for my troubles. Being accused of having caused the sickness in the first place, and many and sundry other evils. I was locked away and beaten several times and was condemned to die yet again--next week, when the judge came in and set his official seal of approval on my guilt and demise--except that my wife's father bribed the guards and got me out just a night or two before he was due to arrive. I remember how old and tired he looked as he stood there next to me and handed over a purse of money and a letter of introduction to some friend of his in Boston who could offer me the sanctuary of a new name and life.

I have since discovered that being hanged is not such a terrible a way to die as I'd imagined then, especially if they know what they're doing and manage to break your neck on that first fatal plunge.

Especially if you know that death itself is not really a permanent state.

Unless someone takes my head, of course. I try not to think about that too much. I suck with a sword. Always have. It's a wonder I've made it this long without a really serious fight on my hands, with another Immortal anyway. But then I'm good at squirreling out of things, bad situations, jail cells and the like. Duncan McLeod's bad temper.

Maybe I really am in God's good graces still, despite the fact that I've done all the things over the years that I was taught would place you on a straight road to hell. Theft and fornication being at the top of the list. Though I still won't touch a married woman, at least knowingly. One little scruple I've never managed to shake.

A married man, either, for that matter. Now, there's a sin I'd never have thought for myself back when I was a proper and honest man among Goodmen. But times change and I've changed with them, at least as much as I can stand to.

Scratch Duncan McLeod and you'll find he's a dour and thrifty old Scot at heart in some ways. While, Amanda still rails against the restrictions even today's liberal society places on women. And, I...?

I passed through some Midwestern town one day just a few years ago, on the move from somewhere unknown to somewhere equally unknown, and saw a horse and buggy parked by the side of the road and a woman and a child standing next to it dressed all in black and other plain dark colors, covered head to toe, and it was as if three hundred years had just been swept away in an instant. They were Amish, of course, and not the first I'd ever seen, but for some reason it struck me hard that day and I had to pull over and wait until my chest stopped hurting before I could drive on. Scrubbing off the tears onto the sleeve of my fresh silk shirt.

I was proper like that once. Plain and unassuming and pious.

I have been anything but since.

As if each "death" stole away a piece of that person my mother had raised and my wife had married and my father-in-law had saved.

A "death" like the one I was waking up from now. Did I say how much I missed those rickety old coffins and the smell and taste of fresh earth and that first sweet and pure lungful of air once your friends hauled you up out of the ground?

It was the morgue again. At least, I wasn't on a metal table this time, opening my eyes to see a green-masked man holding a scalpel in his gloved hand and contemplating the first stoke of my incipient "Y" incision. I almost killed a guy once that way. Almost gave him a coronary all his own as I opened my eyes and sat up and slid over the opposite side of the table from him. Gave him my best wink and nod and a friendly "how ya doin'?" before wandering off in search of a decent set of clothes.

I sometimes wonder what that poor man told his wife that night. After the distracted and expected "how was your day, dear?" would he have stood there with car keys in hand and actually replied with an "oh, fine, fine, a dead man came back to life and walked away, but other than that no biggie..." or would he have just gone home and tied one on with no real explanation.

McLeod would say that I do shit like that on purpose. Just to get people going. To make trouble.

It's true, I quite like a spot of trouble. Like to stir things up a bit. Shake the box and see how it rattles and watch where it all lands.

What's life for if it isn't to have fun sometimes?

But there was no one here to shock tonight. I woke up alone, covered with a sheet and toe-tagged and shivering a little and trying to remember all the details of how I'd gotten here in the first place. I'd been drinking. It had been real late. Or early as the case may be. I remembered that much. And then I must have asked the girl with me if she wanted to come back to my place--or she asked me back to her place, whichever--and then it gets kinda fast and furious from then on.

Me and my doll were walking down the streets arm-in-arm and it had just quit raining and we were playing around with hailing a cab, when a big black car came out of nowhere and slammed to a stop, half up on the sidewalk in front of us. A few grim-faced guys jumped out and one of them shoved the girl away from me and the next thing I knew they had yanked my hands behind my back and shoved the barrel of a gun into my gut and me into the nearest wall. They had searched me quickly and roughly, scraping the side of my face in the process, before pulling a hood down over my head and hauling me off with them. That car of theirs tearing away a moment or two later with me crammed between a couple of bodies in the backseat and my wrists bound together now with something that felt like a kind of thick wire, the whole time that gun still poking into me, hard enough to bruise.

I tried to talk to them, but it only earned me a cuff across the side of my head, and a terse command to shut up as a pleasant follow up.

I had done as I was asked. I mean, why bother? I couldn't get away from them at the moment and they could only kill me and I had to admit that I was a bit curious. Seemed a lot of trouble to go to and I couldn't remember pissing anybody off that much to make such a scene worth their while. Not in the last fifty years or so anyway.

Not since that little shipment of paintings and gold that I snatched out from the under noses of some certain high officials of the SS, who had stolen it themselves in the first damn place so what right did they have to complain?

But they were all dead now or in hiding somewhere in the beer gardens of South America, so that left...?

No real threat to life and limb, unless it was an Immortal at the other end of this pipeline. And most Immortals wouldn't be caught dead--yeah, I know, bad joke, what can I say--using a bunch of mortals as their means to a Quickening. Most Immortals. Not all. And me without my faithful sword, oh dear.

As if I could ever really use the fucking thing in the first place.

It was a short trip. Thankfully, for my less-than-solid stomach. Still, I felt a bit more sober by the time we stopped and they hauled me out of the car and into some building. The elevator almost did me in, but I made it. Just.

The room we finally came to was thick with smoke and there was some old guy sitting there by his lonesome, a half-full glass of whiskey or scotch or something next to him and an old war movie on the tv in front of him. They shoved me a step or two inside, before taking off my hood and moving to block the exit behind me. Well out of reach, even if my hands had been free.

I turned and smiled back at them, before fixing on the old man. Obviously the boss of this here show and a craggier old fart I'd never before met. Unless you count that preacher who came to town when I was twelve, the one who could describe hell and damnation so well it was as if he'd actually been there and maybe he had done because by the time his visit was over he'd run off with a bag full of silver and nearly the reputation of the blacksmith's eldest and not terribly bright daughter. She never did end up marrying, so maybe he did make off with it, after all.

This man had been disappointed with me. Sure, he hid it pretty well, but I saw it in his eyes anyway. His voice was cold, though, as he began laying out his questions. I didn't understand any of it other than that he wanted something. Something I was supposed to have stolen. Of which I had supposedly palmed off a copy to him at one time while in some kind of desperate straits. So, of course, now he was wanting the original. This, at least, was familiar territory and I denied with the ease of long practice. But this guy wasn't in the mood to believe me. "Let's not play games," was how he put it.

How I got it put to me was a sudden punch to the kidneys. Delivered from one of the dour boys from by the door.

McLeod could have taught them a lesson.

When I'd gotten myself straightened out again, he was lighting up another cigarette with a studied air that bespoke the limited duration of a future without great bodily harm. All of which made me smile again. You don't die as often as I have without garnering some appreciation for the finer points of pain. Doesn't turn me on as much as actually dying, but it's not exactly a turn-off either.

Amanda really knew how to dig the heels in. God, sometimes I desperately miss that girl. Hope McLeod's making the most of her, but I doubt it.

Smokes really had it down, though; interspersing questions with punches, each on a spanking new portion of my precious anatomy. Some questions made a kinda sense. He wanted the master, wanted to know how I'd managed to copy it, how many copies I'd made. Others weren't clear to me at all--"how did you get out? did it release you?"--but, by then, I was in a good deal of pain, so things were getting kinda fuzzy.

All in all, I gasped and shook and denied to the best of my ability, which was pretty damn good, and got the oddest feeling near the end that he was beginning to believe me. Believe in my ignorance, anyway.

The old bastard sat back at the last and acted almost sad, as if he was being forced to put down his favorite pet, then he glanced at the men behind me and that was that. The hood was back and then I was off and we were going down in that damn elevator again and into the car or some other car just like it, anyway. The ride took longer this time, and when we were done I could smell the sea air even through the cloth. Could hear the stilted cries of seabirds. Could feel the warmth of the sun just beginning to rise.

Never saw it, though. They just took me out and pushed me to my knees and shot me. Back of the head, I think. Real professional.

Too bad I wasn't about to stay dead.

Which was how I ended up here, I expect. No doubt awaiting Mr. "Y" incision with his snappy gloves and gleaming little knife.

I checked out the toe-tag after I yanked it off. "John Doe." No real surprise there. The bad boys had taken my wallet first thing. All that was left in my pockets was some spare change and a single wrapper of some rather water-logged looking bubblegum. My jeans were a bit damp around the edges, too, and I figured from that they must have dumped me in the water after I'd bit the big one.

My boots were gone. And my jacket. Just when I was beginning to get both of them broke in just right.

Fuck, it always goes to show. Can't keep anything good for long. Might as well give it away. Right?

And that's when things turned strange. Strange even for me.

I heard voices, the sound of footsteps approaching, and quickly settled back down under my friendly sheet. Stiffened myself out. Made like the recently deceased.

A moment or two later, a light snapped on, and then those footsteps were moving closer, right up to me. One voice, female and sounding tired, said, "here, this one," and then I sensed they were gathering around me. I stopped breathing just in time, as a second later I felt my protection whisked away. Revealing me to the light and to whoever the hell had come to identify the remains.

There was a long pause, then a second voice said, "yeah, that's him." I didn't know what to make of that voice--it sounded just as tired, but there were other things there, too. What almost sounded like disgust and what almost sounded like relief, mixed in with a little dash of what came close to resentment.

I didn't know either voice and could only speculate about who this man was claiming me to be. Probably the guy that the old fart wanted dead. The thief who hadn't got caught. With me just happening to get in the way of the all the bad-shit karma due to him. Lucky me.

The sheet settled back and I welcomed it with the faint curl of smile. Now they were talking about what to do with the body and the man was insisting it be shipped off to some other place. That he wanted some other doctor than the local coroner to do the autopsy.

The female seemed eager to do as he asked; seems they had quite a backlog of bodies needing inspection and would be happy to slough me off. Especially to the FBI. That gave me quite a start, which I suppressed, of course.

Bad shit karma, definitely. Though it could be worse. The Texas Rangers have no sense of humor to speak of. I wondered if the Feds did. Guess I was gonna find out.

She told him she would start the paperwork and walked out of the room. There was a long silence, or what felt like one anyway, then I sensed movement and held my breath again. Felt the sheet being pulled back off of me, this time all the way down to my legs. And that's when I regretted having to keep my eyes closed, because the man started searching me. First, he patted down my shirt and then the length of my jeans, before finally sliding a hand into one pocket.

I held still for all this and didn't think I'd begrudge him some spare change if he really needed it for laundry or whatever, and he was more than welcome to the soggy sorry bit of gum, but that's when he got a surprise himself.

Dying turns me on. I think I mentioned that. And whereas some men wake up to a residual happy in the morning, my boy's a kind of resurrection junkie, himself. Amanda and I used to make great use of that in our days; sometimes, we wouldn't even make it out of the graveyard, just strip down as much as was absolutely required and do it right there amongst all our silent and probably envious neighbors. At least, when it was just the two of us. When her dour Scot wasn't along for the ride. Still, I would probably have done it right in front of him anyways, except that she wouldn't likely have gone for it. She liked him, too, for some sorry reason. Even respected him. Go figure.

Not that I would have exactly minded him polishing his sword in my bed, either.

Anyway, this guy gave out a sharp little gasp and began withdrawing his hand rather quickly once he'd realized what he'd found. I caught his arm before he could get too far and opened my eyes at the last. Sat right up and stared into a pair of startled, yet utterly brilliant hazel eyes. I grinned and fell instantly in love, lust, what have you. Take your pick. 'Course, the fact that I was currently sporting a hard-on this side of a carved marble tombstone and those curious fingers of his were still in rather close proximity to it had nothing to do with it.

"Coulda at least kissed me first," I said. "Before tryin' to cop a feel."

He blinked and sputtered out a name--the same one Smokes had called me, I believe--and then tried, once more, to jerk his hand free. Then, when that didn't work, he went to hit me with the other one.

That had more promise and I let him. The impact rocked me back and made sparks flare behind my eyes, a nice shot, right across the cheekbone, and I felt my cock grow harder, impossible as that might be.

A gun tried to make an appearance next, but I caught the other wrist now and this one I threatened to break if it didn't behave.

"Slow down, big boy," I suggested in my softest voice. I could tell by his eyes that we were due for a scuffle, but forestalled it by abruptly letting go of both wrists and rolling myself up and off the table. I landed on my feet on the side opposite my new friend, the sheet slithering to the floor half a beat behind me.

I cocked my head at him, ignoring the gun he finally got out and aimed at me. Just didn't have the same impact as a nice old-fashioned machine gun, but what the hell. One makes due. If one absolutely has to. Still, he was swearing now and he had an excellent grasp of the language. Amazing how some words don't change no matter how many centuries have gone and passed. Nice inflection and delivery, too. It was almost a shame to cut him off.

"Hey," I said, raising my hands in the conciliatory gesture he seemed to be demanding. "Can't blame a man for trying."

Then I lost it and grinned, even wider than before, and wiggled my fingers at him. God, this was better than a stolid coroner, any day. It'd take a bit more doing to send this one to heart attack town. What a challenge.

"What the fuck are you on?" Mr. Serious asked, the gun never wavering.

"Life, death," I replied, then couldn't keep the laugh in any longer. "What a rush."

Those magnificent eyes fell for an instant to the front of my jeans as if they couldn't quite help themselves. They snapped back to my face then and the glare, if anything, intensified. Shit, he really must hate this other guy, or something anyway...

I worked hard to purge my smile then, to damp my natural good humor and raging desire, and somehow made my expression more what he obviously expected it to be.

"I should have known it was a lie," he said. "That it couldn't be that easy. What are you up to, Krycek?"

I figured he meant my unfortunate albeit temporary demise. I didn't think--though I might wish--that he meant anything else by the question. Let alone that he was volunteering to do anything about it. No matter that short sly glance.

"Why don't you find me some shoes," I replied, easy as pie. "And we can get out of here before that kind lady comes back and wonders why I'm not making like a nice little corpse."

He swore at me again, but obviously he wanted to keep me and my miracle to himself because he waved me towards the door with that little toy of his. We found a locker room a few doors down and not only did I acquire a pair of scuffed Nikes nearly in my size, but a faded and friendly jeans jacket that almost made up for the loss of my latest brown leather one.

Hazel-eyes remained silent, though impatiently so, the whole time and I didn't bother to test him. I figured I had the key already, anyway.

We were shuffling quickly down the corridor towards what I had to assume was the nearest exit, when I brought it up. I still had no clue what kind of tape they all were assuming that I'd ripped off, but he didn't have to know that. If it was some kind of blackmail material, though, then I was seriously hoping it was juicy enough to warrant this kind of interest. While, if it was footage of my friend here doing something rude and illicit and especially illegal, then I definitely wanted to get my own hands on it. Take a gander. Before I did the chivalrous thing and gave it back to him. Not in the hopes that he'd prove grateful for the gesture, of course. Well, not completely, anyway.

But he just called me another bad name when I mentioned the damn thing and shoved me out the door and down the steps beyond. Caught me back by a hand on my collar and began steering me down the alley towards the street. It was dark and I nearly stumbled over something on the ground and his grip twisted instinctively, shook me and threw me forward again. Forceful, very forceful. My jeans, which had just begun to turn slightly less uncomfortable, grew a touch painful again and I had to bite back another laugh. This was turning out to be a somewhat fun, if rather puzzling, little game and I wanted more and more to see where it might lead. After all, I'd already paid for my ticket, you could say, and might as well see the ride through as far as it would go. Squeeze what I could get out of it.

Go for the golden ring.

He got a set of handcuffs out when we paused in front of a silver-grey car and I almost lost it again at the sight of them. This was getting more promising all the time. He opened the passenger side door, then yanked my right arm over and snapped one cuff tight around it, before giving me a little push down into the car seat. He locked the other end to the door handle and left me to pull it shut behind me as he went around to the other side, stowing his gun on the way.

He started the car before turning back towards me and in the dim light I couldn't see the color of his eyes anymore, just that they looked dark. Dark and dangerous. As if it wouldn't take much for him to kill me, either. As if just one more taunt would do it.

It was tempting, but I wanted a few answers out of him before taking a dive again. A few answers and maybe...a kiss from that grim and yet perfectly petulant mouth of his.

I asked him where he was taking me and he hesitated long enough for me to wonder if I was going to get any kind of answer, then told me he was taking me to a safe house. That once we got there he was going to get some answers from me, first and foremost and finally. Sounded ominous, delightfully so.

I turned my head away before he could see the glitter of excitement in my own eyes. Slouched down in the seat and made myself comfortable. Or as comfortable as I could be under current circumstances.

The car pulled out and I watched us pass by dark buildings and the brilliant sparks of streetlights. The occasional glowing neon sign. Walkers and gawkers and lovers in arms all passing, passing. It looked like early shakes, yet, in the big city and I figured that a whole day at least must have gone by while I was...um, indisposed. Probably, they hadn't pulled me from the water until late afternoon, early evening. Made me wonder if the mugs who'd plugged me had stolen my boots and jacket or some homeless guy who'd stumbled across me while I was still a friendly floater. I was hoping for the latter. He certainly would have needed it more than me at the time. And I could always get more.

Still, this jacket wasn't near as warm as my old one and I finally asked FBI if he would turn on some heat.

He did as I asked without a word, and then scowled a moment later, as if instantly thinking better of the impulse, and it made me wonder, yet again, about what kind of thing he had going on with this guy he was making me for. I stretched my legs out to the warm air coming from beneath the dash and went back to my perusal of the passing streets. We hooked up with an major road after about ten minutes and then on to a freeway. It was still pretty busy, especially if, by my calculations, it was Sunday evening now.

And, oops, guess that means I've missed church again. My, how sins multiplicate. Especially if given the slightest encouragement.

I shot the driver a glance from beneath half-closed eyes and had to admit that most things about him were rather encouraging. A bit oddly put together, but maybe even more intriguing because of that very fact. He certainly wore his clothes well, and his clothes were worth wearing if I recognized the cut. Made me wonder what they were paying Feds these days and if I could get in on it. Especially if I could get free rein like this guy and go around dragging off folks without a by-your-leave or a Miranda in sight.

Having nothing better to do, I tore him all apart and put him back together. A long drop of a nose. A thin and restrained upper lip counterbalanced by the delicious swell of the lower. A morose face. A sad face. Sardonic, almost. One that brightened to anger so quick and unexpectedly it was as if a bit of flashpaper had gone off. Nearly blinding everyone in the vicinity.

I wondered what else would set him off. Anger was all well and good, but there were better accelerants. Better and more satisfying to all parties involved.

His cell phone rang just after midnight and he answered it with an almost abstracted air, continuing to drive one-handed with the ease of long practice. It was how I learned his name at long last since he answered with it instead of the more usual and polite hello. Still, whoever it was on the other end seemed to be intent on reaming him a new one, so I kept quiet, my eyes glued to the dark and passing scenery. Apparently, my little jaunt from the local morgue hadn't gone unnoticed and they were wondering if he'd had anything to do with it. He denied it, but he didn't quite tell the other person on the line what he had done. Said he'd "explain everything later." It had the ring of a well-used phrase and it didn't seem to go over like topsy right then and there, if it ever had. He got real abrupt soon after and just asked--pleaded, cajoled, wheedled, more like--for the whoever he was talking to take care of it and signed off without another word. No hello. No good-bye. Bookends of brevity.

Much like his in-transit conversation.

We drove for the next couple of hours in silence. Or, rather, he drove and I snoozed and/or pretended to snooze. I think maybe he resented my ease with him, because we suddenly pulled over just after three in the morning. An abrupt and unwarned tug of the wheel and we were shooting off the interstate and down the exit ramp and cruising down a side road until we came to some cheap motel. No pool, but free HBO. What more can you ask for?

He left me cuffed inside the car while he got us a room, after warning me that if I didn't made like the dead again, he'd help me out.

Boy oh boy, if he only knew what that did to me. And just when I was thinking that a good night's sleep was what I was most in need of right about now and screw the screwing. Nah. Never happen.

He cuffed my hands together in front of me before showing me ahead of him into our den of iniquity for the few hours left of the evening. Same old, same old--cheap furnishings, cheaper carpet, and a rather worn and highly overblown red and gold color scheme that would have put even a whorehouse from 19th century Kansas to shame.

He was all set to latch me onto the frame of the farthest bed, when I informed him that I was in sore need of a whiz. Talk about discomfort and annoyance at such a simple and pretty standard request. What? This Krycek character never had to piss? Maybe, I was out of my league, after all.

And, maybe, old hazel-eyes-mulder-FBI-guy was only half a voyeur, because he kept his little self out line of sight--if not earshot--of the half-open bathroom door as I laid down a trail of water in the johnny. Flushed like a good little boy and even washed my hands, my new metal bracelets getting all slick and soapy in the process.

It gave me an idea, but I doubted he'd go for letting me have a shower, let alone be clambering to join me in it.

At least, not without a fight.

Which had its own appeals.

I decided it was time to take an upper hand.

However, either he'd been paying even more attention than I thought or was some kinda mind reader, because I emerged to find him with his suit jacket off and that gun of his pointing right at me again. And, sure, I coulda jumped it. After all, what was the worst he could do? Kill me?

But I found myself smiling instead and he seemed to take that worse.

All he told me, though, was that he was going to get a little rest and then I was gonna tell him where the "damn fucking tape was" and if I knew what was good for me I'd cooperate right dandy. Then he'd see if it was worth saving my ass by sticking it in that safe house he'd promised me in the first place. Well, that's mostly my translation, but you get the general gist. Probably the tone, too.

I decided to be sparklingly honest for once. See where it got me.

"Don' know," I said. "Don' have it."

Oh, baby, was he pissed then. I think he just barely restrained himself from taking that gun upside my head. He did shove me down on the nearest bed and stick it in my ear, though, if that made up for it.

More threats followed--and some rather interesting commentary on this Krycek fellow's parentage and personal hygiene habits--but I tuned them out. Tuned in instead to the feel of him over me, his knee in my back, his fingers tangled in my hair.

They twisted slightly, an eye-stinging slice of pain.

"Harder," I whispered.

"What?" he spat, his hurtling train of abuse abruptly derailed.

I turned my head to one side, trying to look up at him, and he let me "Is that the best you can do?" I asked, then tried out his name for the first time. "Mulder." Taking my time over it. Tasting it, tasting how it made me feel.

How it might make him feel to hear it in my mouth.

Hazel eyes looked down at me, shocked, incredulous, and not a little wary. Then those long fingers tightened in my hair and yanked my head sharply back and he leaned in even closer. His breath brushing across my face. The gun forcing itself deeper into that soft place just in back of my ear. Digging in.

"What the fuck kinda game are you playing now, Krycek?" he hissed at me.

I gave him my best innocent look. Too bad it faded so quick into one rather more revealing what I was really feeling. Dollface always said I could smolder with the best of them when I wanted to and she had a rather dark-natured Scot to compare me to. Plus countless other men, I have no doubt.

I slowly and quite deliberately licked my lips. As if the clue bus hadn't already stopped to hand out free passes.

"You want the tape," I said, a half-serious, half-teasing note to my voice. "Then why don't we play a kinda fuckin' game."

His eyes flickered at the reordering of his own words, and I wasn't sure if he was appalled or amused. Probably a little of both.

Then that lovely mouth twisted and he let go of me, backed away. Stared at me over his raised gun.

I rolled over on the bed, then stretched out slowly, feeling each joint pop and shift in turn. Let my head fall back.

"Didn't you ever guess?" I asked. "Must have played it too close to the cuff. Sorry." I was speculating here, but I figured I was on pretty safe ground. It was likely that the man in front of me had never directly confronted the depth of his emotions towards bad-ass-tape-stealer. Something that probably cut both ways. Made me wonder what way it spilled out in my handsome look-alike. Like water, such things usually take the path of least resistance.

'Course, I got the feeling that FBI here took to swimming against the current on a regular basis.

But wheels had obviously been spinning over there, because his head came up and he took a half step back towards me.

"You don't have the tape, do you," he said, and though it was phrased like a question, it really wasn't.

I lifted one shoulder and dropped it again.

"We found the locker," he went on, as if building some kind of case. Maybe, he was. "But it was empty. Just the envelope and the case. I wasn't sure who'd gotten to it first, you or..."

He trailed off, but I could just about see the writing on the wall myself and it said: Thank You for Not Smoking.

"He don't have it either," I replied. "Kinda the reason, you see, I ended up in the drink."

"Where is it then?" A real question, this time. The hundred-thousand dollar one.

"Think I'll tell you?" Make me scream and I'll tell you just about anything I wanted to add, but I restrained myself; I wasn't gonna let on to that little quirk of mine, not on this first date, anyhow.

He seemed to have been anticipating that denial, because he instantly shifted gears.

"What happened then after the car crashed?" he asked. "They pulled you out of the car and there was this flash of light..."

I looked away from him. Caught. Maybe, it was time at last to come clean, 'fess up, see if he'd love me for my own charming self, rather than as my darkest twin. Or, maybe not, 'cause he was going on.

"We thought..." he paused, then continued as if some interior voice had corrected him. "I thought that you might have met up with our body-jumping alien. Mrs. Gauthier was found in that same bathroom in Hong Kong, covered with oil, just like her husband."

Now, that was as clear as mud. Aliens? Oil? I immediately began wondering if it was flavored oil. I was partial to raspberry-chocolate, myself. Especially with a little whipped cream on the side. Seems like whatever he was on, I should look into getting me some.

"Fuck, we even went up to North Dakota. I was sure you were there, that it was there. We saw the bodies. Before that cigarette-smoking bastard yanked us out . But you saw it, didn't you? The UFO they pulled up from the bottom of the ocean. You were there."

More with the "it" and now mention of a UFO's besides. I felt like sticking out my thumb and seeing if yonder clue bus would pull over for me. But I've never let ignorance stop me before. Hell, that's what luck's for.

"What'll you do for me, if I tell you?" I asked. I'm sure my tone told him exactly what I was trolling for. "What do I get out of it?"

He took another step forward, his face hardening. "Your life. How's that for a start."

I shrugged once more, letting him know just how much that mattered. "Try again."

He knew, but he didn't want to know and he sure didn't want to let on. A shadow of something passed through those nice hazel eyes and was gone.

"Go fuck yourself," was all he said. It almost came out in a whisper, though. As if he was trying to keep from losing the last of his control. The very thing I wanted him to let go of, at least in a certain way.

"Would if I could," I replied, then just had to smile at him. "Heard it's one hell of a ride."

I raised my eyebrows at him suggestively, but none of it was touching him.

"I should have just killed you," he went on and it was as if voicing that sentiment had finally given him the key to his anger, to his hatred. It flared suddenly, making his face look almost ugly, a transformation that was echoed by his eyes. They had gone all flat and reflective, leached of all but the most basic of colors, a bit mad around the edges, and I believed him in that moment. I've seen the eyes of death before, faced them down in both mortal and Immortal form.

His gaze made me twitch. Made my smile suddenly fade. Made my heart race. My cock throb.

"Go ahead, then," I breathed. "Do it." I raised my hands a little, showing off the metal restraints to the light. "I'm at your mercy, after all."

I watched those eyes--knowing that's where I would see it first, see the thought become action, become my death--but part of me was still rather intimately aware of how tightly he was holding that gun. Of his fingers whitening on the grip. Tightening on the trigger.

I took one breath, then another. Held it. Stilled and waited.

His eyes fell first, reluctantly and almost shamefully. The corner of his jaw jumped and his shoulders slumped a moment later. He let the gun sink down, hanging loose in his grip. As if he'd all but forgotten about it. FBI suddenly looked like a different man, much too old for his few years, tired almost past the point of understanding. Someone who had borne too much too long. Who had been worn down to a bleeding nub by pain and mistrust and defeat after defeat.

I let my hands fall again to my stomach and he didn't even react to the movement, didn't even look at me. I took the opportunity to slide myself off the edge of the bed and take a small step towards him. The gun started to come up again, but it paused half-way. His eyes flickered towards mine and were caught, this time, by my own. I couldn't read them at all now, but they had returned to at least a ghost of their former brilliance. Caustic and quick, blue and green and grey and brown all at once.

I wanted to fall into those eyes. I wanted to drown in them.

Another small step and we were face-to-face, just a thin whisper between us. I didn't touch him, didn't raise my hands--he might all too easily take that as a threat--but just leaned over that last little bit and touched my lips to his. Could hardly call it a kiss, at all. But it made a dizzy heat surge through me, congregating in the pit of my stomach, at the backs of my eyes, arrowing everything down to just those eyes, that mouth.

I kissed it again and tentatively it parted for me, softened to my softness. I kept it light, almost teasingly so, gambling that this man hadn't much of kindness in recent years, if at all. He tasted so good, though, it was an effort not just to let loose. To smash that gun out of the way and yank him up against me, let him feel how much I wanted him. How much I wanted and needed this.

I pulled back a little, then licked that lower lip. Ran my tongue up along the top edge of his teeth. His eyes were studying me and I couldn't help but wrinkle my nose at them, so damn serious. And here with me trying so hard to get a seduction off the ground.

"Relax," I said, stepping across that last inch, feeling the hard edge of his gun coming into contact with my stomach. The only thing left between us besides good intentions. Well, naughty ones, anyways. His body felt warm to me even through his clothes and mine and that dizzy feeling swept back over me as I pressed us together from knee to shoulder, curved my head in around to the side of his face. Gave it a quick swipe of my tongue, all the way up to his ear.

His skin was a bit rough--not quite in need of a shave yet, but close enough--and it tasted of musk and salt and something bitter, yet faintly sweet at the same time, something that reminded me of spices mulling over the fire and fresh pine sap and earth and falling snow. The way winters used to be in the old days, cozied up beneath a quilt against the cold, all meshed limbs and shared breath and candles flickering above the hearth. Releasing the scent of honey, of captured summer, into the room.

I licked him again and, this time, I thought that he shuddered a little. Shuddered against me. Something nearly as hard as the gun barrel suddenly making itself known against my thigh. I nipped at the line of his jaw, then shifted and began rubbing my leg up and down that friendly interloper. Shit, I loved the feel of a rigid cock. Against me, in me, wherever. The one thing I missed about sleeping with women. The one thing they couldn't offer me, at least in its natural state, and I hated rubber almost as much as I hated rubbers.

Thank God it's not really an issue and never will be.

He whispered a name. Not my name, but close enough. Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly said with the note of encouragement I'd like to hear, but he hadn't shot me yet, either, so I figured I'd made a few points.

I nibbled my way down his neck, until the tie brought me up short, then reversed my direction up the other side. Heading, finally and inevitably, back to his mouth.

He let me kiss him a third time, a little more deeply this time, before turning his head away. Not roughly, but with a bleak and uneasy denial.

Couldn't seem to tear the rest of his body away, though. Fancy that.

"Stop," he said, then seemed to be fumbling for more words. I had to imagine it was an unusual state for him. His breathing had gone a little harsh, something I always loved.

"Krycek, you can't be serious. You can't...I can't...don't..."

I pressed my leg a bit harder into his erection and his voice cut off abruptly, cascaded into a tiny gasp.

"Why don't you let me worry about that," I said. Then, because he seemed in need of further reassurance. "No one ever has to know. No one."

Not even the guy he thought he'd just been kissing. Whoever the silly mug was. How many chances had that particular fool passed by, turned away from, or just fucking missed? All to my advantage, of course, considering, but still I felt a twinge of pity for him. He may look like me--or I may look like him--and he had that going for him, but he certainly had a lot to learn. Too bad their lives were so damn short. It made things difficult, sometimes.

"I hate you," FBI muttered, as if that were the solution to all his problems.

"You don't know me," I mumbled right back. Well, what do you know? A tidbit of truth, bald-faced and blatant. I must be slipping.

He shook his head. "I know you," he refuted, but with only a thin layer of rancor. "I know you enough not to ever trust you." There was obviously an unspoken "again" in that statement, but he kept that back. Probably not wanting to give up too much power. To reveal so much to his enemy. I could relate.

"So, don't," I responded lightly. I pulled back a little and simply waited for him, waited until he found the grace to look at me again. To look right into my eyes.

His own were still angry and even more uncertain than before, disconcerted either by what was happening or by what he was feeling or both, but the very confusion in them made me want him more.

"What have you done to me?" he asked.

I shook my head slightly. "Nothing you haven't done to me, too." I smiled a little, then half-closed my eyes and gave him my best fuck-me-through-the-sheets look. "C'mon, it's the least I can do for you. Don't you think?"

For a second or three, I thought the anger was going to win out again. His free hand came up, fist-clenched white, and I began to brace myself to be hit. To be knocked on my ass. Then it all seemed to run out of him. His hand fell again, far more slowly.

Tired, definitely tired.

"This doesn't change anything," he said quietly.

"Good," I replied, not knowing if it was or not. Not really caring. "Fine. Perfect."

I was describing him by this time, but he didn't know that. I leaned in to nip at those luscious lips again, but he pushed back into me and made it more, much more. His mouth opening to cover mine, sealing off my air, forcing my own lips apart with a sudden stabbing motion of his tongue. A clash of teeth. The sting of salt and light and force and fusion.

Tired, no this man wasn't tired. He was hungry.

I let him have my mouth, let him pull me even closer and ram that hard cock up against me. I heard his almost anguished moan and, if the rest of it hadn't melted me, that would have all by its lonesome. And, oh sweet Jesus, I wanted to touch him, to hold him, to run my hands up and down his back and unstrangle him from that tie. Strip him of that suit, no matter how flattering. See and skim the shape of my prize. But my hands were still bound and I didn't want to remind him of that fact. Not at the moment, anyway.

But now he was moving on to my jawline and I arched into it instinctively, raising my head to make it easier for him. Those lips weren't disappointing, not in the least. Not that I'd really expected them to be. Dignified and degrading, obtuse and obscene, hard and soft at the same time, his mouth drove a shiver through me sharp as a sword thrust.

Right to a vital organ.

It was a fatal pleasure and I gave into it without a fight, without hesitation, letting it wrap me in a world that contained only this, only him. A darkness and a sweetness and a need and fever that was part his and part mine and part the dark and silent incubus that stood between us. Would he hate or love what I was doing with his betrayed one? Where I was leading him in his name. If I was him, I'd love it, so he'd most probably hate it. Want to kill me for it.

What a rush that would be...

"Krycek?"

I almost didn't respond to the question. My brain was about a quart low right now. My hands had somehow risen after all, without my conscious volition, and several buttons on the other man's shirt had come undone, revealing pale skin and a sprinkling of light brown hair.

"Mmmm?" Best I could do under the circumstances. Smooth. Boy, was I smooth. You'd think three hundred years would give you an edge. Or, at least, some kind of breathing space.

"Bed."

Oh, yeah. Good idea, that. Elegantly put. Glad that someone's thinking.

Belatedly, I let my hands fall from that temptingly bare skin. "Sure."

He pushed back from me and I nearly staggered. I caught myself and stood there, slumped a bit, my eyes closed while I tried to steady my breathing, calm my heartbeat. I swear I haven't felt this worked up since my first heist. A certain laundress had benefited from that midnight hold-up. Plus her ailing parents, of course, but they got quite a different gift.

I finally glanced up and saw that FBI was looking at the floor, also seemingly struggling with himself. He was frowning and, as I watched, he swallowed heavily a couple of times. Even though his pants were far looser than my jeans, I could mark the strength and shape of his arousal. Shit, I wanted that baby. Wanted it bad.

He glanced up at me without warning, then seemed to grow somewhat embarrassed about how I was looking at him or maybe about the state of his current state. It was almost immediately followed by a beautifully classic sheepish expression. I gave him a look of mostly mild amusement; God, the man could change moods on you faster than Amanda could change her mind. Her outfits, too, the fashion flirt.

I turned away before it might transmute yet again, not sure if it would be a change to my advantage. I walked back over to the bed and considered it for a moment, before grabbing one end of the spread and throwing it wide. Not silk by any means, but at least in this age you could be pretty sure the sheets would be clean and the bed empty of unwelcome hitchhikers.

I waited there and, though it seemed to take forever, it was probably less than a minute before I sensed him approaching me from behind. I just stood there, unmoving, passive as I could manage to make myself be, as arms slid and closed around me. One hand ending up flat on my stomach, the other crossed over my chest. Close to an unsuspecting nipple.

Warm moist breath raised the small hairs at the back of my neck. Where even I, even an Immortal, was vulnerable.

And particularly sensitive, perhaps because of that same vulnerability.

A soft sound escaped me and more stockpiled at the back of my throat. My legs tensed and my jeans constricted around my cock like a living thing. Then, he licked me there and my first reaction proved to have been nothing. I just about jumped out of my skin. Just about gave into the urge to grab him and spin him around and take his head off with the nearest sharp object.

So I'm basically no good with a sword, at least compared to most folks I come into contact with. Doesn't mean I'm a slouch in the instinct department.

I forced myself back to stillness and was rewarded when a nibble followed and then something approaching a real bite. I only dimly realized that my hands were hurting. That I had begun clenching them, so very hard even my short nails were biting into the flesh. Methodically, I worked them back open and then raised one to cover the other man's hand, matching us finger to finger. His hands were slightly longer than mine, rather more slender, almost delicate in feel and look. An illusion I wanted to test.

Dimly, I felt his other hand shift steadily downwards until a couple of fingers had slipped themselves through a belt loop in the front of my jeans. They paused there, as if considering, then pulled up abruptly. Jerking the material tight on my crotch.

I strangled back a gasp as the seam of my own jeans scored fire across my trapped cock. Tried and failed not to fight within his grasp as he did it again, even harder this time, but he held me, his arms tightening a notch further. He bit the back of my neck, as if in counterpoint, sharper than before. A red heat instantly spun through my head, followed by a hint of panic that I quickly subsumed. No. No threat. He wasn't a threat. At least not in that way.

Then he yanked on my jeans once more and, this time, didn't let up. I straightened, resisting the urge to go to my toes. My cock had already been close to the point of discomfort, but now, with the heavy seam of my jeans cutting into it, the discomfort turned into an unforgettable knot of pain. Raw-edged and mixed with shocking pleasure at the same time. One that needed no excuse, but certainly needed answering.

I didn't give the other man any warning--it was more fun that way--just moved my hand and closed it around the one beneath it. Wrenched myself suddenly sideways with all my strength and skill and took him with me. We landed on the bed together, a tangle of limbs and cursing protest, at least from him. It bounced and creaked and groaned beneath us and a quick laugh bubbled up inside me, spilling out like champagne over the rim of a glass.

FBI was less amused; he jerked his hand out of my grasp and shoved away from me and the gun suddenly reappeared from wherever he'd stashed it--the small of his back, I suspected. He fought to put some space back between us, raising the weapon at the same time.

I wasn't having any of it. I'd played the pussycat long enough. I threw myself at him and grabbed the arm with the gun, rolling us over until I was on top at the last, my legs twisted around his torso, pinning him down. He arched up immediately, kicking out at me, trying to roll us again, to get out from under. I had to let go of his arm to restrain him. Didn't want to actually break it, after all.

I think I probably bruised him, though, when I pressed his shoulders back into the mattress. When I tightened my legs on his, inadvertently, though quite pleasurably, bringing my cock into contact with his hip bone.

He twisted again, then abruptly desisted. His eyes glared pure murder up at me, mouth tight, compressed in a line as hard as the barrel of the gun that somehow had come to rest against the side of my face.

"Bastard," he spat at me.

"Not true," I replied, amiably enough. "My parents were well wed."

Before he could dig up a second retort, or try to toss me off him again, I moved my head and let the gun rub over my cheek, scraping the unforgiving metal along the angle of the bone. In such a contest--between steel and powder and fire--bone and flesh always gave first. But easily broken, easily mended, you could say. At least if you had the trick of immortality up your sleeve.

He hadn't pulled away or moved again, so I raised my head even higher. Slowly turning it until the gun hit the edge of my mouth. I paused there, then finally parted my lips for it. FBI seemed to catch on at this point. Probably, though, he thought it was his own idea, his way of regaining control, and so that's why he went along with it. Or, maybe, he was a sick fuck at heart, much as me.

Whatever. I didn't look at him as he carefully slicked the end of the gun into the corner of my mouth and then pushed it deeper inside when there was no objection. I immediately began suckling on it and, after a moment or two, he started moving it around obligingly, letting me lick the length of it, swirl my tongue around the tip, take it in as far as I could before pulling back to taste it again. The metal was cool and the oil slightly bitter, but the fainter flavor that overlay both was something I already knew, that I had already consumed this evening. The taste of the other man's own oils and sweat and scent.

I tilted my head to take it in even farther and I could tell he was getting turned on by it, really getting into it; his body was tensing and untensing beneath me and either he still had a second gun shoved in his pocket or his cock was standing well to attention.

My own cock was cast in steel. It twitched a little each time I took the barrel into my throat. I could almost feel the blood straining inside the veins, making the skin stretch and ache. A scarlet flood surging up inside me, begging release with greater and greater intensity. But when I finally flicked my tongue across the open tip, picturing the bullet down inside and imagining how close that death actually was, I almost did myself in right then and there. Almost lost it.

I jerked my head back quickly, cursing myself for not knowing better. The gun barrel knocked into my teeth, then slid out across my lips and was gone and it was all I could do to hold still and let the impulse pass, to try and lead myself back from the precipice.

He must have realized what was wrong--or, far too right--because he held quiet for that moment, too, though the part of me that was still capable of it noticed how he brought the weapon up before his eyes and stared at it. At the liquid marking the dark metal.

"Fuck," he mumbled. I wasn't sure if the sentiment pertained to me or to himself. We were probably both close enough to the edge right now.

"Yeah," I breathed back, then did laugh, though it came out with rather more desperation that jocularity. "Sounds like...a plan to me."

I swallowed a few times, glancing up at the distant and unassuming ceiling, then finally looked down and back into those hazel eyes and they weren't angry anymore, they were...something. Oh, yeah--something, all right. A sinner's paradise. Hot with knowing and bright with an almost innocent surprise, the serpent and the apple all in one. The ultimate temptation, for angel or Immortal alike.

I leaned down into him, tilted my head a bit to one side. "Got anything else of yours around just dying to be sucked on?"

His eyes widened a touch, then narrowed. "Definitely," he replied. His voice sounded shaken, just a little, but it was adorable.

"Oh," I said, leaning down that last tiny bit, our mouths almost touching now. "'Definitely.' I like the sound of that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do."

I made the kiss hard this time, thrusting my tongue in as far as possible from the get-go. Sucking heat and moisture from the darkest part of him. Making it my own.

And, dear God, I loved how mortals tasted. Immortals, too, for that matter. But mortals had a certain special tang to them, like brandied fruit or well-sugared comfits, achingly sweet and heady at the same time. Kind of like mortals tended towards zing, wham, kah-boom, blow your head off kind of shit, while Immortals were something that had to be savored more, like a fine wine or a nicely aged scotch.

This guy was for sure in the first category; he could really kiss when he decided to get right down to it, as if he truly was intent on trying to take the back of my head off. Bring me to a sudden and appallingly wicked death. With his tongue, this time, not his gun.

When we finally broke it off, both of us were panting heavily and his lips were nicely swollen. I licked them in false apology, then rolled completely off of him. Lying next to him with my hands clenched once more, though for far different reason. Shit, if I didn't get these jeans off soon I was gonna end up punching a hole right through them. And I'd lost enough clothes already today.

I began to change my mind, though, when the bed dipped down next to me and clever fingers moved in and began tugging at my shirt, undoing the few buttons that remained on the bedraggled material. I turned my head to see FBI had gotten up on one elbow, then half-closed my eyes as his other hand pulled my shirt to one side and immediately latched upon my nearest nipple. Another tender spot--I was just chock full of em--it sent a tingle of acute pleasure winging through my stomach and further southwards.

And he must have finally laid the gun aside, because he shifted then and his other hand began stripping my shirt off and over my right shoulder. Kindly, I raised myself up to try and help him, but he shoved me back down and I got a pinch on a now rather sensitive nipple for my troubles. Pain immediately jangled and tangled itself up with pleasure and I gasped. Almost as good as a caress, by any means

And my reaction must have encouraged him, because he got a bit rough with the rest of my shirt and tossed it aside with an impatient gesture. He moved to hover over me then, kneeling down on the bed, and lowered his head in an almost predatory gesture, his mouth coming down directly on my other nipple. He bit at it first, hard enough to draw blood, then began licking it in a circular motion, rasping little strokes like a cat might give.

"Oh, shit..."

I don't know who said that, but it couldn't have been me. That wasn't my voice, not at all. My sentiment, but definitely not my voice.

When I could open my eyes again, I glanced down and FBI was looking up at me from beneath lidded eyes all his own and he was like a cat in that instant, curious of what effect he was having and yet removed from it at the same time.

I've always liked cats. Distrusted them, at the same time. Could turn on you in an a second, sink a tooth or claw into the same hand that had been just petting them. As if resenting the very enjoyment you were giving them.

My people used to think cats came from the devil. Maybe, they weren't far wrong.

He went to bite me again, but I shook my head at him and gave him a little push. He sat back up and watched as I reached out towards his own shirt. Unfortunately, his gaze automatically fell to the handcuffs that I was still wearing and a strange look crossed his face. Dismay filled my stomach, but then the edge of his mouth curled up and he reached out towards the cuffs, snagged them by the connecting chain and gave them a yank much like the ones he'd given my jeans. The metal edges cut into my wrists and I winced. Then I smiled.

He smiled back, but it matched my own with its almost complete lack of pleasantry. Roughly, he used the chain of the cuffs to pull my hands up and over my head. It made me feel instantly exposed, made me feel helpless beneath a searching and inquisitive pair of sharp hazel eyes. I adored it; fear is a vastly underrated aphrodisiac.

He gave me a second or two to get used to the new change of events, then shifted again, straddling my legs, and then lowering himself on top of me. With an admirable precision, he brought our lower bodies into alignment, compressing that fine erection of his directly into my groin. His dress pants could hide a multitude of sins, but they couldn't hide the size and heat of that sweetheart.

My jeans were doing a better job of it, but I wanted the damn things off. Right pronto.

"Mulder?" I asked.

"Mmmm," it was his turn to reply, his eyes closing a little again as he adjusted himself one last time, then began sliding himself up in down in a slow and murderous pace. Right over the source of my problem and back again, over and over. As if he had all the time and restraint in the world. And, fuck, I wanted to smack the man. Wanted to laugh myself silly.

Wanted to sink myself down inside him or sink down with him inside me.

I settled for parting my legs without warning on one of his downstrokes. He fell between them and that was that if it had ever been that. Suddenly it was quickfire, mercury, flashpowder, napalm, take your pick, because it was as if there was no cloth, no barrier, nothing at all between us anymore. Just flesh and flesh and heat and a terrible pressure that seemed beyond comprehension. He gasped and moaned and pushed down into me and I pushed back, and then we were lost and simply writhing against each other, sliding and skidding and rubbing like a couple of maniacs, each cursing softly. Ourselves or each other, it didn't matter.

Just this creation. This fast and increasingly furious friction.

"Stop. Shit," FBI finally muttered, then clenched his teeth and went completely and utterly still. Obviously, just trying to hold on, to hold back. Not wanting it to be over, even if he still wasn't entirely sure he wanted it at all.

I approved of the decision, being in somewhat dangerous straits, myself. You'd have thought I'd had time enough to learn. You'd have thought.

"You know," I finally managed to say. "It'd be even better...with a tad less. Clothes, I mean."

"I know...what you mean," he ground out.

"Be...obliging, then, would you?" I asked. "I'm kinda...indisposed, right now."

"That what you call it?"

"Call it what you like," I replied, arching up minutely into him. "You're in charge, baby."

For a second, I thought I'd given away the game right there, as a frown etched itself across his forehead, a spark of uncertainty moving to ice over the heat in his eyes. Then it quickly melted away as I thrust up again, tried half-seriously to wrench my hands free of his hold on them.

A nerve in his jaw jumped as he automatically jerked my wrists back down. Hard. Then his gaze went a little opaque again as he slowly shifted his grip on the metal to just one hand and brought the other down, laid his forearm heavily across my throat. A glittering metallic-grey now, those eyes regarded me with a calm air that was almost frightening. I would have sworn I could see my own face in them, reflected back at me as from some old and silvered mirror.

Amazingly, nothing much changed in them as he suddenly shoved down and completely cut off my air.

At first, I just laid there, but as a minute went by and then two and he still wasn't letting up, I finally began struggling, trying to throw him off, fruitlessly gasping for air that never came. A surge of actual fear started to burn its way through me, charring my vision around the edges, turning it to cinders. To blackened ash. My heart pounding harder and harder and my cock screaming and yet another minute now, maybe more, and it was all I knew anymore. All I could ever know. Except for the face of the man killing me. And those eyes, those distant damning eyes. Waiting and watching.

"Yeah," I heard him say, a distant voice, a distant place, the words like liquid smoke. "I am."

He pressed down for a few seconds longer, grating the bone of his forearm painfully across my adam's apple, then released me just as abruptly. And, as if nothing untoward had just happened, he leaned back on top of me and languidly and quite calmly began undoing the rest of the buttons of his shirt with his one free hand.

I gasped hard, tears starting up in my eyes, feeling a little nauseous with the strength of my relief. But I still couldn't look away. Couldn't turn away.

His eyes were still on me, a taunting look, almost daring me to say or start anything. For an instant, I wanted to do just that. Show him who and what I really was, maybe even take his pitiful mortal life, but the impulse faded almost as quickly as it had begun. So I just laid there beneath him, breathing hard, trying to swallow past the pain in my throat without unduly wincing. Finally realizing that I didn't want to kill him because part of me had simply been too damn thrilled by what had just happened, by the very unexpected nature of the attack. That I was even more turned on than before.

I said I was a stupid sick fuck, right? As if there's anything wrong with that. With just lying there passively beneath the man who'd choked me and watching him finish with his shirt and then move on to his pants, stripping them off as well. It should have been awkward with just the one hand, but he somehow managed it with style. Never quite letting go of his hold on me the whole time. Never quite looking at me, either.

The pants followed the shirt off the side of the bed, leaving him at last in only a pair of briefs. A pair of briefs that left little to be imagined.

And I have a rather spectacular imagination.

"You gonna...do me now?" I asked. Even to my ears, my voice sounded rough. I gave him an insolent flick of my eyebrow just because I felt the sudden need to contradict it. To decry his effect on me.

His eyes flashed at that outright invitation, only to be followed by a doubt that instantly washed the desire back and away, that made him fix and focus on my face once more, studying me closely. His own face suddenly a mask, gone bland and unreadable. I wasn't sure if it was me he was uncertain of again or of what was happening between us. What he'd done so far or what he was about to do. Either way, it made me nervous. FBI was certainly a smart one; he was quite ready, willing, and able to cop to the fact that I wasn't who he thought it was before the night was through--though hopefully not until after we'd got to the main event of the evening--all by his little self. He honestly didn't need me giving him a compass and guidebook.

I shut my mouth again, determined to keep it shut from now on. Yeah, sure.

"Maybe," he said thoughtfully, as if to himself. "Maybe not."

Too damn smart by a long chalk.

"Mulder." I said his name with just enough of a whipstroke to catch his attention. Managed to buck up a little, catching a piece of that rather nice swelling of his. The front of his briefs was wet already, probably as wet as the inside of my jeans.

His eyes flickered, but that was all the reaction I got.

"Mulder..." I tried again, far more softly. Letting some of the need escape. Not wincing back from the hoarseness in my voice, this time. Accepting it.

Again, a flicker of those brilliant eyes and then that mask slipped at the last and fell aside, intellect and introspection giving way once more to instinct. To a desire as white-hot and untouchable as a live-wire, a desire that was almost a rage. Fingers twisted the chain of the cuffs, twisting my wrists with them, a bruising force that cut skin as well. He crushed his erection down on me hard enough to hurt and lowered his head a second later, closed his teeth on the nipple he'd bitten earlier. Pulled on it and stretched it and sent a searing little pain spiraling through me.

He didn't bother to lick it afterwards, this time, just moved on to the other one and did the same, before heading up my neck, biting hard, marking me. Ignoring my gasps and protests. My encouraging cries.

As if what I wanted didn't matter.

Maybe, had never mattered.

A hand caught my face and held it as he suddenly swung back and forced his lips to mine. Jammed our mouths together so tight and fast that teeth scraped against teeth. I tasted blood and wasn't sure if it was his or mine. Wasn't sure if I cared.

His tongue was busily mapping me, probing me, cutting off my air once more, and I gave myself to it freely. To the feeling of being filled and possessed, prelude to what I really wanted. It was a brutal kiss, almost a bite sometimes more than anything else, and when he finally backed off again I knew my own lips must have looked as swollen and red as his own. Nearly as sore as my nipples felt.

I licked them and he stared at them, at me. Continued to stare at me as his hand slipped down between us and began working my zipper open. I tried to control myself, but when those slender fingers found their way inside it was all I could do not to come on the spot. They were cool on my heated flesh, cool and knowing, as they circled me and squeezed me and finally pulled me free of the constricting material.

FBI leaned further back and glanced down at what he'd found. One eyebrow went up and a ghost of a smile appeared. I didn't know if it was a vengeful or a helpful spirit. Probably a touch of both.

My cock certainly liked him. It was bobbing slightly in his hand, the head engorged to an almost purple color, the foreskin already peeling back under its own power. Under his influences. Revealing the pink and tender slit beneath, weeping its special tears. He ran his thumb along it and collected the liquid, then popped it into his mouth with all the relish of a little boy with his teddy and blanket.

My stomach hollowed out at the sight. At the way he sucked on the digit, sucked me clean off of it.

It was glistening with quite a different liquid when he finally removed it from his mouth, glanced at it a second or two, then held it out to me. Placed it right up against my swollen lips and looked expectant.

I didn't disappoint him. I opened my mouth and took it in, closed up around it as hard as I could, pressing it between tongue and palette. Sucked and stroked and made damn sure he knew what I capable of.

Not that I wanted to blow him tonight. Or even wanted him to blow me. Fantastic though that would be with that fucking mouth.

He was biting at that incredible lower lip when he finally pulled his thumb free. Wasting no time now, he finally let go my the handcuffs and sat back, shifting up and around until he could work my jeans down over my hips and thighs and off. My borrowed Nikes, too. I didn't help him. Obviously, he didn't want me to. He wanted me passive, and I wanted him.

His briefs went next, revealing a cock flushed a lovely shade of red. It contrasted perfectly with the cluster of dark brown curls it rose from, the pale skin of the belly that it immediately arched towards as it was freed. He had been cut, as most men in this time were, and the tip of his member was slick with a flattering amount of pre-come. If my hands hadn't been restrained, I would have tried out the same trick on him as he had on me. As it was, I kept them where he'd last placed them.

Keeping myself open, stretched out to bone and hollow. One that I wished he'd hurry up and fill.

And maybe FBI was a mindreader as well as a nutcase with a fetish for bad boys, because he began running his hands up the inside of my legs. Stroking and parting them wider, making the muscles there twitch and tremble. Again and again, always just falling short of actually touching my cock or balls. Fucking tease.

I tried to keep still, but it became harder and harder. In more ways than one.

Finally, I groaned out something. Wasn't sure if it was his name or a plea or some bizarre combination of the two.

And he took pity on me. Or, maybe, you couldn't call it that, because what he started to do to the top of my straining cock had nothing of mercy about it. He licked at it first, almost gingerly, then went down the length, following one of the bigger veins. Buried that odd nose of his directly into my balls, nipping at the loose skin, before trying his damnedest to take one whole one into his mouth.

I made another sound then, and it wasn't pretty. Especially when he bit down a little, began rolling the other one around with his fingers. Slid them further down a moment later and across even more tender skin, began circling yet another sensitive spot. Dipping and teasing and testing.

I jumped when he let go of my balls. Then jumped again when he grabbed my cock in less than gentle fingers and slid it abruptly into his mouth, that other exploring finger driving inside my ass at the same exact moment. As if they'd been synchronized.

I wasn't ready and it hurt, driving me instinctively upwards away from the pain and so deeper into that hot mouth. And, maybe, that had been the plan all along, because he did it again and again, catching me on an increasingly fine line between ecstasy and pain. Between heat and moisture and slick pressure and the hard jab of first one finger and then two. And, shit, that really burned and made me realize that it'd been a while.

That I didn't know how much longer I was going to last if he didn't knock it off soon.

"Stop." This time, it was my turn to protest. To be the voice of sanity.

He went on and I thought that maybe he hadn't heard me. Then I felt those fingers begin to slow and finally stop, still buried inside me as far as they could go. His tongue swirled around the head of my cock and then that too slowed and stopped. Like a merry-go-round winding down.

And me still without that golden ring.

He raised his head and his eyes looked almost green now, almost the same shade as my own, and they were killer-vicious, mad babydoll eyes. Eyes that said I was in for the fucking of my life. Or one of them, anyway.

He pulled his mouth off my cock, which moved almost as if trying to follow him, but left his fingers inside me. As if they'd decided to move in and set up shop, start redecorating.

"Stop?" he echoed. His voice had gone a little mad, too. It gave it an etched glass edge. "You sure about that? Baby?"

And he suddenly twisted those fingers and hit on that certain special spot I hadn't had hit on in a while and ball lightning poured down over my head and caught fire in my cock.

"Shit," I cursed, arching up helplessly under its foul influence. Cat and devil, indeed. Could be he was a match for my evil twin, after all.

And, maybe, I wasn't going to have to kill him. Or, maybe, I was. Because he did it again, pressing harder this time, scraping across it slightly with those short fingernails, and I almost took flight. Red pleasure rocked me, blood-licked and shocking as a sudden electrical surge, the voltage nearly beyond bearing. Certainly, if I wasn't an Immortal I wasn't going to survive this.

I was going to get burnt right up. Knocked clean out of my shoes. If I was wearing any.

I've been blown up before. I know what it feels like.

When I crashed this second time, I had to work hard to remember what speech was. Modern English, in particular.

"Please," I whispered, forcing it from between shallow gasps for air. "Just. Fuck me. Okay?"

Green. Most definitely green.

"Sure," he replied easily. "Easy enough."

For him, maybe, the shit. He slid those damning fingers free and started to shift me over to my stomach. I resisted, maybe for the last time.

"No," I said. It came out more of a question than a demand, which was probably a good thing.

He hesitated, then shrugged.

It was more of a concession that I'd really expected. If he'd really had his little heart set on fucking me from behind, then I would have let him, but I wanted to see his face. To watch those eyes of his. See if they would change again, especially when he got close, when he finally came inside me.

But then he frowned and my day went abruptly cloudy.

"Shit," he said and bowed his head a little, not looking at me, sounding defeated. "I don't have anything."

I knew what he meant immediately, but wasn't sure if he was talking about condoms or lubricant or both.

"Hey," I said. Taking the chance, I lowered my arms from over my head and took one finger to his chin, tipped his face back up. Smiled my bravest smile right into those changeling eyes. "No worries, okay? Can't give you anything I don't have. And, let me tell you, right now I don't give a flying fuck how much damage you do me, as long as you do me."

He blinked, seemingly not knowing how to take that comment. Maybe, not knowing how much to trust either my sentiment or my safety.

"Sorry," I mumbled, not really knowing what I was apologizing for, but giving in to the impulse anyway. I raised myself up and pulled him down slightly at the same time, brushed my lips across his face and then his ear. Breathed into it with as much seduction as I could muster. And I could muster a lot. "Just meant to say...I won't break. But you just go ahead and try, babe. Make me scream. You do that, mister FBI agent Mulder and I'll tell you whatever you like. No more secrets. No more lies. What do ya think? We got a deal?"

He was shuddering slightly now against me and I couldn't tell which was revving him up more, my cock pressing lightly against his or the soft lick and tickle at his ear or the promise of the truth. Didn't rightly care.

As long as I got that rosy cock of his where I wanted it.

I laid back and, holding his eyes the whole time, slowly raised my cuffed wrists back up over my head. Licked my lips and then parted my mouth and let my head fall back. Sighing heavily, arching upwards a little at the same time, rubbing our mutual hard-on's together. So it was a trick and unfair, but it works and that's what matters, don't it?

I watched as FBI took it all in, as he closed his eyes and turned his head away slightly. Sucked in a deep and ragged breath, before opening them again and looking at me. And there was that anger, again, but it was intertwined with an emotion just as dark, just as sharp. If I didn't know better, I would have called it a kind of possessiveness.

He reached down and began touching himself, running quick and deft fingers over and around the head of his cock. Collecting as much of the clear liquid as he could.

Considerate bugger. I'd all but given him the keys to the carriage and he was still worried about taking it for a test drive. And so I've gotten a few centuries mixed up there, but it was getting more difficult all the time to concentrate. Especially now that he had moved those same fingers back down and was slicking that juice of his up inside me. Oh, yeah, quite a deft touch. I didn't think he was missing a spot, at least of what he could reach. Did I mention he had long fingers?

He got up to three of those suckers inside me before he seemed satisfied and, by that time, I had little shame. If I'd ever had any to begin with. He seemed slightly amused by the sounds I was making, even more amused by how hard I was pushing back on those fingers. Then again, maybe amused wasn't quite the word for it.

Abruptly, he seemed to have had enough. He pulled his fingers out roughly and immediately began trying to push my legs up and into position. I let him, scooting myself further downwards at the same time. I would have less control this way than on my stomach, but that almost seemed part of the point of the evening, part of what was driving me. Letting go, giving up, being someone else and seeing where it all took me and what it got me.

It was freeing and a little frightening at the same time, like being asked to play a part when you haven't learned your lines--haven't even seen the script--and had only just now found yourself cast as the villain of the piece. With a shitload of bad reviews behind you.

And the biggest critic of all about to give it to you up the ass.

Not that I was complaining, mind you. No, I couldn't call it that. Wasn't that terrific a liar. Well, okay, I was--but not with the head of a very fine cock pressed up against me and the owner of said cock leaning over me and looking down at me like a starving man might look at a turkey leg. A fine line of concentration between his eyes that spoke of an endearing fight for control.

The same control he kept as he began working that baby up inside me, easing in and then off after each minute push. Careful, so careful, like I was a piece of fine china, or as if he really cared. So he was more confused than even his earlier and rather convoluted speech might let on to.

He seemed to know what he was going about, though, which made me wonder. Both about his relationship with this other guy and about the FBI in general. Didn't think they went in for that kind of thing among their ranks, no matter rumors to the contrary about ye old J. Edgar. 'Course, I didn't know what they'd be thinking of an employee who chased after aliens and UFO's and shit, either, so there was that.

Still, no matter how much practice FBI got up to in his spare time, or how slowly he was taking it with me today, it still hurt and I found myself tensing up and had to carefully and deliberately try to relax once more, to just let it happen. And then he was pushing at me harder, that line stitching itself deeper on his face, and I felt him slip inside and couldn't quite keep back a gasp at the feeling. Couldn't quite suppress a little twitch.

He paused, though I could tell it was the last thing he wanted to do. "You okay?" His voice sounded strained.

"Yeah," I hissed back. "Just do it, okay? Do it."

He still seemed hesitant, so I fixed my eyes on his and simply spread myself wider. Arched my back up and pushed myself as hard as I could onto that slick knob of heat and steel lodged just inside me.

And I felt something half a wince, half a shudder run through the man above me and then that reaction was spotted and run to ground by the same narrow-eyed and impossibly ravenous creature I had seen a hint of before. I swear he actually growled, or groaned anyway, and then went completely silent as he lowered his head and simply shoved. No more finesse. No more niceties. Just a want and a need and the will to take it all. To take me.

And, sweet Jesus and all his bouncing baby lambs, he slammed me down into the bed with all the force of a blow, one that I felt clear through to the empty spaces of my bones. Shocking and mind-numbing as a piece of shrapnel to back of the skull or a bayonet in the gut. Hitting some place that I swear had never before known touch, let alone been smashed flat so fucking thoroughly.

He made a sound like he'd been struck as well, then pulled out and did it again. And again. Retreating and then roughly driving that cock in as far as it could go and then some. His hands coming up now to close on my shoulders, to hold me for his thrusts. Tearing me apart and putting me back together, burning me with a secret pain and pleasure nearly beyond belief. I would have screamed right then and there and given him the keys to more than the family carriage, but I couldn't find any damn air.

There was just him--laying almost fully on top of me now, crushing me with his skin and scent, his head buried in the crook of my neck and his teeth and fingers imprinting me, pinning me in place. Forcing me to accede to the crude rhythm he had fallen into, too fast to maintain for long. Not that I needed him to.

It had been too damn long. Over fifty years if I figured it rightly. Hell, this guy hadn't even been born yet the last time I'd gotten a royal good reaming out.

The last time I'd wanted to.

Well, except for McLeod and Richie--just a little, if he didn't have almost as big a chip on his shoulder as the Scotsman--and that guy I ran into over in Brussels and...

Ah, shit.

But I think FBI here could put them all to shame. Even if he wasn't going to last.

And I think he knew that fact, because he suddenly shifted and lifted his head and looked at me, really looked at me, and then those fingers were moving down and had me again, rubbing and squeezing and working as if to try to steal me my own corner of oblivion.

And, maybe, he could and should look into being a thief, because the next I knew I was digging my own fingers into the very metal binding them, lifting myself as best I could for each relentless thrust, hardly able to keep my eyes open anymore, but wanting...needing to see.

To glimpse a hint of the destructive fire that lurks in the heart of mortals, and that this one seemed to have in abundance.

The fire that us poor Immortals long for and cling to and weep over through our long dark centuries of existence. The fire that a lot of us have lost within ourselves somehow, somewhere along the way, leaving us with only our few bright moments of battle and the agonies and rapture of the Quickening to make up for it. Not that they ever can.

So I get maudlin, sometimes, when in my extremity.

And, right now, things were pretty extreme. Extremely hot and extremely heavy. We were sliding on each other's sweat and my heart was playing a Sousa march and he was kissing me yet again, sucking away what little breath I had left to call my own. His tongue probing my mouth the same way he was punching himself up inside me, quick and hard. As if he wanted to taste himself there when he came.

I almost thought he would.

And then the percussion section smashed as one into their grand finale and the buck-toothed boy grinned and there was that gold ring, after all. Only it looked more green than gold, and blue and grey and transcendent and triumphant and so amazingly astonished and...

"Fuck," FBI wheezed and bowed his head and neck so far back I thought I heard his bones creak in protest. His mouth hanging open now, breathless at last, and his cock stiff and still and solid within me. Except for a sudden flutter and twitch, a quicksilver heat surging repeatedly into my darkest places. Filling me up and sending me over.

"No!" I screamed, but it was yes, always yes.

Reality began rupturing itself around me and I found myself clinging to the one remaining piece of it I could find. Shaking and shivering and feeling a pleasure so clear and vivid and keen that it sliced through me like a hot knife through butter.

A cliché, but in the moment who the fuck cares?

I think he held on to me, too, as I lunged up roughly against him and came all over his lower stomach and my own. And I think he moaned out a name as my body tensed and strained and contracted around the place where we were still joined, wrenching yet another flutter and tingle out of him still so far up inside me.

"Yes," I whispered and, this time, it was a no, as I fell backwards and released him. My hands coming to rest forlornly in mid-air, not knowing what to do with them for the time being, those pretty and yet damning cuffs still dangling off them. I shouldn't have moved my hands down and I shouldn't have held him and I certainly shouldn't have done this in the first place, but a wagonload of shoulds will get you nothing and nowhere.

It looked for a minute like he just wanted to lie there as well. His eyes unguarded and his mouth relaxed, his sweat slowly trickling down his face and dripping off that unmistakable nose and finally onto my own face. A peaceful, agreeable picture that couldn't last. That didn't.

Averting his eyes suddenly, he lifted himself up and pulled out of me with an almost mechanical precision. A casualness that felt as cold as the air that rushed in to fill the warm pocket we'd made. Without a word, he turned away and went to sit on the far edge of the bed, his back stiff. His whole fucking manner unapproachable.

I closed my eyes briefly, then sat up as well. Steering well clear of his wall of space, I slid off the bottom of the bed and stood up. Straightened up, ignoring the soreness and the small tide of moisture on my inner thighs. If any of it was blood, it didn't matter; I would heal. I always did.

Without a word, myself, I started towards the bathroom, only to hear the bed shift behind me and then a sound I knew only too well. The sound of a bullet being pumped into chamber. Very slowly, I turned and saw FBI was standing now, too. That pet gun of his pointed directly at me once more and a look of almost painful accusation and suspicion on his face.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Like I thought--one smart cookie.

I raised my hands, surrendering to the moment. That one I'd figured had to come.

"Might as well put that away," I said, glancing at the weapon, then back at him. "We can keep this sociable. And it won't do you a hell of a lot of good, besides."

A frown appeared at that. Then was smoothed over by that same bland look that I had come to learn presaged some amazing revelation or denunciation. I wasn't disappointed.

"You're a clone, aren't you? Or one of the alien shapeshifters."

And to think once I thought Immortals were the most unusual things around.

"No and no," I replied. "Wanta try again? Go for what's behind door number three?"

He didn't find my Monty Hall funny at all. And here Amanda once told me that McLeod had compared me to a game show host, all excitement and flashing lights and teeth and prizes until you get to that final question and decide to risk it all and end up fucking it up and going home empty-handed.

I think she thought I'd be offended by the comparison, but it was fair enough. I like my life. And I'm gonna enjoy it for as long as it lasts. I mean, hell, why not? Everyone goes home empty-handed eventually. Even Immortals. No matter how good they are with a blade or how quick on their feet. When some lucky bastard finally chops off my head I wanta leave more behind than just a good-looking corpse. I wanta to have done some good and had some fun and, most of all, I wanta be remembered. Well, I was pretty sure to get that; at least, I don't think FBI, here, was gonna forget about me any time soon.

Kill me, maybe, but not forget me.

I lowered my hands and he raised the gun a touch in response. Redrawing the threat. I just gave him the easy insolent smile of a man who'd just been fucked this side of Eden.

"Let's try again," I said. "Introductions all round, shall we? You're Mulder. Supposed FBI agent and quite recent fuck-er. And I'm Cory. Supposed corpse and quite recent fuck-ee. Not who you thought I was and not about to be intimidated. By a gun, anyways."

I was taking a chance on flippancy, but it was hard to dash my current good mood. Even if I'd wanted to. And since he didn't immediately step up to the plate and clobber me or pull that trigger, I figured I'd won that particular toss. Until he took a half-step towards me, that is.

"You promised me the truth," he said quietly.

My smile faded a little. "Yeah, I did," I admitted. "So shoot."

"What are you?"

Give the boy a gold star. He really could call em. I knew I was supposed to lie at this point, to dissemble, protect the old boys--and old girls, gotta love em--of the Immortals Club. Do my bit to keep us under wraps until this Gathering I didn't give a hoot for anyway. So sue me; I wasn't gonna lie to the guy. I'd promised and, besides, who the hell would listen to him. In between blatherings about UFO's and aliens and shapeshifters and other shit.

"I'm an Immortal."

Odd thing was I felt FBI believed me right away, at least on some level. Which was just jim dandy as I wasn't into getting myself offed just to prove a point. Not today, anyhow. But when nothing changed on that attentive face, I realized he was waiting for me to expand on my explanation, so I did.

"I was born in the year of our lord, 1655. Died--for the first time--in 1679. And many times since. Most recently at the hands of your little smokin' buddy. Who also assumed I was this guy--Krycek, was it? Or was it...Alex?"

"Fuck," FBI mumbled. A reaction at last.

I tilted my head and gave him the once over. "We already did that. Not that I wouldn't mind a second round, if you feel you're up to it."

I raked my eyes pointedly over his still naked form, then raised them again. Jesus, the man really could blush. At least, now that he thought I was someone other than who he'd thought. A stranger. One that he'd just had his dick up inside as far as it could humanly go.

"If you..." He stopped and started again, shifting gears. "Why did you lie to me, then? Lead me on. About who you are...Cory?"

He said the name reluctantly, uncertainly, as if he didn't or couldn't wanta believe in it. Everything else, sure, piece of cake, but not that. A pat answer rose immediately to mind, but there was something sad about his very uncertainty that made me abandon it.

"Curiosity," I replied, enunciating each word clearly and carefully. "Self-interest. Fear." One long pause, but couldn't pass it up. "Attraction."

"And Krycek? What do you know about him?"

I shrugged. "Nothing. Never met em. Never even heard of him before today. Or this whatchamacallit tape you and the old guy want so damn bad." I paused again and added, more gently. "Wish I could help you, though. You seem like a nice enough bloke."

He didn't respond, though the gun finally began slipping downwards.

I gave him my best sympathetic grin then--the one that could spread legs across the country--and was relieved to see a slight response, the bare and wry edge of a smile all his own.

"Don't know about you," I said, still in that gentle way. "But I sure could use a shower about now. Maybe even some breakfast. Before you let me go. If you intend to let me go, that is. If you're...entirely satisfied...as to who and what I am and am not."

His smile drifted, then returned with greater force. Even a bit wicked at the corners. "I don't know," he said. "This might require more study. After all, I do make it my business to investigate the paranormal."

"No?" I said, the original patented old time medicine show note of surprise. "Never would have guessed."

"'S true," he replied. "And I like to think I'm a very thorough investigator. Cross all the i's and dot all the t's."

I laughed. It wasn't really funny, but I laughed all the same and began walking towards the bathroom again, knowing without having to ask that he was going to join me, after all. If only to make sure that my back was well-scrubbed. That I didn't make off with the soap.

But he caught me in the doorframe and smashed me up against it and I let him have his way for a second, before slipping out of his hold and turning the tables. Grinding our rising boys together. Kissing the tip of that nose, before licking it. Then I just had to ask, though.

"You really an FBI agent?"

"Yeah," he answered, hazel eyes fixed on mine with a kind of half-assed grace I was finding increasingly addictive. Looking so far into me I wondered if he could see the man I once was, rather than the one I had become. I wouldn't put it past him. "You really immortal?"

Now it was my turn to blink, to consider, to smile, but never to regret. "Maybe, I'll let you kill me later and you can find out for yourself. Empirical evidence and all that shit." I paused then and let my voice fall even further, let it go deeper. "Or maybe we'll have better things to do by then. What do you think?"

Oh yeah, turning green again. Turning warm. Warm and hungry. "I think you're a fucking sybarite--Cory..."

I made as if to bite him and, when he jerked back, just settled for showing him my teeth. "Actually, I prefer the term hedonist. Has a nicer ring to it."

And then he kissed me hard and I kissed him harder and, after a shower long enough to burn off two layers of skin between us, he finally let me out of the cuffs and I returned a few favors, before we finally got to a belated breakfast and departed on our merry and separate ways.

Okay, okay...so some of that last little bit didn't happen. Or, actually, a lot of it didn't happen. Can't blame a guy for dreaming or wishing, least of all exaggerating. I think he did call me a sybarite at one point, or was that a snake? Not that it matters; even God seems to get the two confused.

I did tell him that I was an Immortal, but for a guy who believes in half a dozen other impossible things before breakfast, he didn't seem overly ready to swallow this one. My cock, sure, but not my story. And since I wasn't in the mood to spoil the afterglow by having myself stabbed with a convenient letter opener or letting him shoot me or drown me in the sink, well, I just had to settle for him believing that I wasn't the guy he thought I was. The guy he wanted to arrest or bury in some deep dank hole in the ground or take home to meet momma or something.

Though, I guess he really wouldn't do that last one. Seeing as this guy killed his dad.

And some folks think that I need a coupla decades with a decent shrink.

Anyway, he did finally let me have my shower and then took his own with me conveniently chained to the bedframe and he slept at last and I slept, though not really at the same time. And I ditched him later that afternoon while he was unloading some of the coffee he'd filled up in leu of real food when we got back on the road together. He'd quit calling me "Krycek" by that time, which was an improvement, but the studied and uneasy silence that replaced it turned old hat real quick and my opportunity came so I took it.

Took his car, too. Bet that really pissed him off. Especially when he discovered his wallet gone, as well.

Think a paltry pair of handcuffs could really keep me down? Unless I wanted them to, of course.

But, sufficient as the truth may be for some, I prefer happy endings, myself. All smiles and ticker tape and appreciative babes. But you go right ahead and pick out whichever version you prefer. Mix and mingle if you like even. Work it all around until I feels...well, the best. Whatever rocks your boat, I always say. Whatever tickles your fancy.

Whatever gets you through the night.

I know what I do to get me through the night. And, sometimes, I still find myself wondering and trying to imagine what he does. Mister FBI with all his rage and repression and inadvertent kindnesses and passion. His practiced fingers and mobile mouth and quite inadequate social skills.

And, sometimes, I even wonder what he does. My twin and his tormentor. I somehow don't think he's a happy ending kinda guy either.

But I'd like to find out.


End file.
